


Grief in the Aftermath

by EmiWanKenobi



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Aftermath, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief, I do write happy things I swear, I just don't post them apparently, Post-Canon, not so much on the comfort end though tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 01:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5987833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmiWanKenobi/pseuds/EmiWanKenobi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war was over, the Archdemon was dead, Alistair and all her friends had survived. Fergus, her brother, was alive, and had already sent her a letter from Highever, telling her to come home for a visit as soon as she could.</p>
<p>She should be happy. She was trying to be happy.</p>
<p>Why couldn’t she be happy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grief in the Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little ficlet starring my Warden. Post-game. Hints of AlistairWarden.  
> Cross-posted to my tumblr

Robyn ought to have been happier.

The war was over, the Archdemon was dead, Alistair and all her friends had survived. Fergus, her brother, was alive, and had already sent her a letter from Highever, telling her to come home for a visit as soon as she could. The castle she’d grown up in was being repaired and all traces of Rendon Howe’s presence in it cleared away with a vengeance. All would soon be ready, and Fergus wanted her to come home, even if only for a little while.

Really, everything was as it should be.

But she couldn’t sleep. You would think that it would be easier now. For the moment at least the demon song in her head was quiet, there were no more visions of destruction to startle her awake. But now nights were too quiet, and she spent them mostly sleepless, tucked against Alistair’s chest or wandering in the moonlight when she could escape without waking him. By day she was exhausted, and snappish, with emotion creeping up her throat until she forcefully swallowed it back. She should be _happy_. She was _trying_ to be happy.

Why couldn’t she be happy?

Sometimes she was afraid the others could tell. Zevran had taken to watching her; she had felt his eyes following her more than once. Alistair had begun to notice as well, and to want to help, though he seemed at a loss for what to do.

It was easier when she was busy. The now constant weight on her chest lessened to a bearable degree when her hands and thoughts were occupied. Give her a job and she could breathe again, get through the day one task, one new skill, one step at a time. Thank Andraste there was plenty to do after the end of the Blight. Meeting with the Wardens from Orlais, and then the rebuilding of the order in Ferelden. She just had to keep moving, keep going, keep working.

For a while it had been enough, and then suddenly it hadn’t. Now that the fate of Thedas wasn’t resting squarely on the shoulders of she and her companions, Robyn found that too many other weights had settled in to take that place.

It got worse. Day by day, one quiet moment after another, until Alistair was openly worried and Zevran was quiet and kind, apparently understanding far too much.

It got worse, and Robyn kept swallowing it, and it kept building beneath her skin, pressing on her insides until it felt like she was going to burst.

The day she did, it was over nothing. 

She had been sharpening a dagger, and the blade slipped, her fingers too shaky to hold it steady. It had barely even hurt, little more than a shallow graze across her palm. She had half a dozen scars from wounds more serious, more painful.

But the blood welling up made her breath catch, and that was a fracture. The shaking spread from her hands to the rest of her, and that was a crack. A small whimper of pain bubbled past her lips, and her eyes blurred with tears, and that was the last blow.

She had held so much back in the past year that it came out like a dam had burst, pouring from her in a sob that sent her doubling over, curling down on herself like the wound had been a sword through her chest instead of a slipped blade against her palm.

She hadn’t cried since Highever fell. Grief she had been outrunning since the night her parents were murdered struck her like a tidal wave and left her drowning, choking on sobs that wracked her whole body. She had resisted, denied it all for so long, determined to be strong, to go on, to make the sacrifice her parents made worth it. Even when the Guardian had questioned her, even when she’d faced the image of her father in the Gauntlet, she had refused to let it consume her. The world was at peril, she couldn’t falter.

But the peril was lessened now. The world was no longer in any immediate need of saving, and her resistance was at an end.

She missed her parents. She missed her home. She missed a life without impossible choices. She missed a world where death was a distant thing that had never really touched her. 

She missed not feeling like there was something broken inside of her, a crack in her soul filled with dark whispers and vicious screams. 

Alistair found her that way, on her knees and sobbing like her heart was broken. He called her darling and held her close, frightened and unsure, but offering comfort in the best way he could. By being there. By holding her. By being strong enough for both of them now that she no longer could.

“It’s alright, darling,” he whispered. 

It wasn’t. For a year it hadn’t been, and for the rest of her life it never would quite be. That crack would remain, and the voices, and the nightmares. Her parents, her childhood friends would still be gone, Highever would never again be her home.

“ _It’s_ _alright_.”  

It wasn’t, and Alistair knew it. Right now it wasn’t. Tomorrow, or the next day, or the next week, things would settle. Things would cease to be _pain_ and begin to be _healing_.

But for the moment nothing was alright. For the moment Robyn was done pretending.

For the moment, and after far too long, she was finally going to grieve.


End file.
